This month’s spotlight is on Innovega, a company developing extended reality technologies in several industries, including eye care. I recently spoke with Innovega Co-Founder and CEO Stephen Willey.

STEPHEN WILLEY
CO-FOUNDER & CEO, INNOVEGA

Mr. Willey, please tell us about your company in terms of its history and direction.

Innovega was founded in 2008, with a mission to develop augmented reality systems for defense and intelligence applications. Augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and virtual reality (VR)—what we call extended reality (XR)—has long been hindered by large, heavy lenses inside of bulky eyewear. The epiphany for us was to take the lenses out of the eyewear and place them on or in the eye in the form of contact lenses or intraocular lenses (IOLs). While these enable our system, an important outcome is the display eyewear; the smart glasses are light, thin, and more comfortable to wear. A short video of our system and how it works is available at https://youtu.be/slJ_J_J6E7o .

Our initial focus was also on a scleral lens, developed with Paragon Vision Sciences, that utilized a non-gas-permeable polarizer. The joint development led to novel means of delivering oxygen and to methods for assembling scleral or hybrid lenses with components. Even so, we did not see the scleral with the non-gas-permeable polarizer as viable for larger applications.

In 2014, we changed our focus to address the market need for a soft lens and embarked on developing technology for a gas-permeable polarizer. Once we refined the system, the question was where to commercialize it first? The visually impaired population is close to our hearts, and we intend to deliver levels of performance that surpass contemporary low vision aids in partnership with a well-established company in this market. We plan to extend this technology to other healthcare modalities as well. Innovega is passionate about helping patients who have sensory and cognitive impairment that can be addressed with our system.

Innovega is also committed to delivering its products through licensed eyecare professionals (ECPs). The lens portion of our system is a medical device and will require evaluation and fitting by an ECP. We believe that the role of ECPs is vital for the success of all XR.

Tell us about any new developments in which Innovega is involved.

Our first product is iOptik—a soft, frequent replacement, non-rotating contact lens with a two-state gas-permeable polarizer and a central micro-lens for focusing the directly viewed display in the spectacle plane. iOptik contact lenses are used in conjunction with optics-free display eyewear. The eyewear for the visually impaired has an onboard camera, displays, and software for image amplification and enhancement.

We are working on future applications that include eyewear for the hearing impaired; for first responders, intelligence, and defense; for sports training and performance enhancement; for occupational performance enhancement; for telecommunications; for anytime and anywhere information and entertainment; and for interactive gaming.

Tell us your vision for the contact lens field in the short term (less than 5 years) and in the long term (20 years from now).

We predict that the era of component-containing lenses will commence within five years and will change the service and product offerings for ECPs. Lenses and electronics are natural partners, and we believe that in 10 years, smart lenses will be commonplace.

Long term, we see a merging of vision care and some consumer electronics delivery. We advocate and envision personalized XR, which invites participation by ECPs. The diversity of human visual performance is far too broad to promise comfortable use of XR systems without personalization. There is always a limit to “one-size-fits-all.” CLS